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Pop "You wanted a hit, but maybe we don't do hits," states James Murphy on LCD Soundsystem's This Is Happening. That claim sounds a bit disingenuous coming from someone whose last album, 2007's Sound of Silver, made many critics' best-of-the-dec

Pop

This Is Happening

(DFA/Virgin ***1/2)

nolead ends "You wanted a hit, but maybe we don't do hits," states James Murphy on LCD Soundsystem's This Is Happening. That claim sounds a bit disingenuous coming from someone whose last album, 2007's Sound of Silver, made many critics' best-of-the-decade list (it topped NPR's), even if he's addressing Britney Spears, Janet Jackson, or another of the numerous commercial stars who sought him out for production work. What LCD does do is make self-aware club classics for hipsters, going back to 2002's "Losing My Edge," and This Is Happening seems destined to follow that tradition.

Full of hard, shape-shifting grooves that blatantly allude to Kraftwerk and to Brian Eno's collaborations with David Bowie and with Talking Heads, Happening doesn't radically alter LCD's modus operandi: Murphy is still declaiming about the ironies and facades of club culture. But it's still deeply satisfying, from the rowdy "Drunk Girls" to the slowly strolling "Somebody's Calling Me." At least artistically, Happening is a hit.

- Steve Klinge

nolead begins Reflection Eternal
nolead ends nolead begins Revolutions Per Minute
nolead ends nolead begins (Blacksmith/Warner Bros. ***1/2)

nolead ends Rapper Talib Kweli and producer Hi-Tek have paired well with unlikely collaborators - Kweli on songs with Justin Timberlake and UGK, Hi-Tek as beatmaker for 50 Cent and Snoop Dogg - but they've always seemed destined to work together. In 1998, they teamed up for Kweli and Mos Def's Black Star; two years later, under the moniker Reflection Eternal, they released an album of their own, Train of Thought. Revolutions Per Minute is the follow-up to that record, and it's both fresh and nostalgic. Hi-Tek excels at soulful, roomy tracks with bursts of funk and crisp percussion, and here, he offers some of the finest beats of his career. Kweli plays the perfect narrator, dancing with the somber rhythms in "City Playgrounds" and "Lifting Off," and knocking around the drums in "Back Again" and "Ballad of the Black Gold." This is conscious rap without an agenda: Just when things get too serious, Estelle drops by for "Midnight Hour," turning the revolution into a party.

- Michael Pollock

nolead begins Bobby McFerrin
nolead ends nolead begins VOCAbuLarieS
nolead ends nolead begins (EmArcy ****)

nolead ends It's ridiculous to call this album pop; it's an insult to call it perfect. Supervocalist Bobby McFerrin enlisted composer Roger Treece (who should be even more prominently co-credited) to compose complete pieces - full-on serious works - based on McFerrin tunes, phrases, nice bits. Seven years later, Treece came back with these astonishing creations.

McFerrin recruited more than 50 of the best singers in the world and individually recorded them; the album comprises more than 1,400 vocal tracks. These are fabulous singers, such as Kim Nazarian and Darmon Meader of New York Voices, Janis Siegel of Manhattan Transfer, Brazilian trailblazer Luciana Souza, the amazing Joey Blake and Rhiannon (from Voicestra, McFerrin's improv vocal group) - and R&B goddess and longtime Rolling Stones singer Lisa Fischer, second soloist here. This virtual choir sings right off the planet, synthesizing all McFerrin has explored, Bach, tuva, the African diasporas, reggae, Qawwali, nursery rhymes. "Baby," the first piece, about how infants watch adults, is so unbearably good you're almost afraid to listen to the rest. (But you should - the high standard never flags.) In "Baby," Treece elevates a McFerrin concert favorite from charming/cutesy into stratospheric, gleeful profundity. The way the chorus settles on the line "Have you thought about whatcha bring your baby up to be" stuns - it just stuns.

The first four tracks are a postmodern oratorio on language, music, and meaning, vocabularies that bust apart, stripped down to the keening ululations of "Wailers." The last three pieces open out into matters of the spirit. McFerrin knows he's being pushed, and he responds. His blues scatting (over Indian melismatics!) in "He Ran to the Train," or his vulnerable pas de deux with Fischer in "Brief Eternity," the KO finale, elbow dozens of high points that gun VOCAbuLarieS beyond pleasure to lasting joy.

- John Timpane

nolead begins The New Pornographers
nolead ends nolead begins Together
nolead ends nolead begins (Matador ***1/2)

nolead ends It's easy to see where A.C. Newman, one of the leaders of Canadian rockers the New Pornographers, stumbled. When you make two perfect albums in a row, it's generally to be assumed that you're used up, at least for a bit, which goes double when your trade is in pop. Newman and company weren't quite tapped: The singles "Use It" and "Sing Me Spanish Techno" were so good they made people think they, too, were on a great album, and "Mutiny, I Promise You" added a tricky time-stutter to those old reliable chord shifts. But you could tell Newman was nervous about running out. He tried to sidestep the bottom of the barrel with wandering ballads ("The Bones of an Idol") and prog symphonics ("All the Old Showstoppers"), and he let Dan "Destroyer" Bejar, also a lead singer and writer, run amok with psychedelic ambition ("Myriad Harbour"). But none of those worked as well as the power-pop, which sounded easy and rewarded hard.

The New Pornographers' new Together breaks this pattern and finally might afford them a life after hooks. The first few tracks come simple enough: one-dimensional thrashing on "Your Hands (Together)," Bejar Anglo-jangling like the Monkees on "Silver Jenny Dollar," Neko Case (yet a third prominent vocalist and writer in this talented band) competing for space with a whistled hook, of all things, on "The Crash Years." But for once the best songs aren't the catchiest ones, and the places they go are actually surprising, like the way the brisk "Up in the Dark" keeps stacking on harmonies, or how the lovely "Valkyrie in the Roller Disco" glides to heaven via piano and banjo. And the baroque "Daughter of Sorrow" is Bejar's most straightforwardly gorgeous performance since "Streets of Fire." While no tracks on Together peak as high as a "The Laws Have Changed" or "Use It," it's the New Pornographers' easiest full-album listen in years.

- Dan Weiss

Country/Roots

The Devil Is an Angel Too

(Alligator ***1/2)

nolead ends Janiva Magness has been bringing home some big honors in the blues world. The 2009 Blues Music Awards recognized her as the entertainer of the year and contemporary blues female artist of the year, the latter for the third time since 2006. The Devil Is an Angel Too shows the acclaim continues to be well deserved.

The Julie Miller title song sets the theme for an album that allows Magness to explore, as she puts it in the liner notes, "the duality of the human condition." Joy and sorrow, hope and despair, toughness and vulnerability - Magness runs the gamut through a collection of top-flight material.

Magness again brings smoky-voiced intensity without over-emoting - her version of "I'm Gonna Tear Your Playhouse Down" is as menacingly hard-hitting as Ann Peebles' or Graham Parker's, and she gives new bite to Nick Lowe's "Homewrecker." On the other side of the coin, Joe Tex's infectiously up-tempo "I Want to Do Everything for You" and the slow, quiet "Weeds Like Us" and "Turn Your Heart in My Direction" - both by Magness' husband and accompanist, Jeff Turmes - prove that the singer's boundless conviction remains even when the tough cookie turns tender.

- Nick Cristiano

nolead begins Dick50
nolead ends nolead begins Lateshow
nolead ends nolead begins (Rockhouse ***

nolead ends Dick50 comprises four core members of the great Delbert McClinton's band: bassist Steve Mackey, keyboardist Kevin McKendree, guitarist Rob McNelly, and drummer Lynn Williams. (They also happen to be among Nashville's top session men, having worked with B.B. King, John Hiatt, and Dolly Parton, among others.)

If the members of Dick50 can't quite match the singing and writing of their boss at his best - few can - they still expand on his rock-and-soul amalgam with their own authoritative touch. They bring deep grooves, a bluesy edge, and an occasional '70s vibe (notice the clavinet on "Medicine Man"), while "2012" shows they can downshift from roadhouse rambunctiousness to affecting, midtempo balladeering. Oddly enough, "Theme From Dick50" veers in a different direction: It's a fun blast of vintage atmospherics that sounds like a collision of Dick Dale and Ennio Morricone.

- N.C.

Jazz

Odean's List

(In+Out ***1/2)

nolead ends There is something elemental in the sound of composer and tenor saxophonist Odean Pope. His approach was formed when John Coltrane and Lee Morgan roamed Philadelphia gigging with him, and it positively explodes on this octet recording on the German label In+Out.

Partly it's because Pope's sound is so vivid. His compositions are crowded and festive, like bassist Charles Mingus' work, and cover a wide range, from very sweet to very intense. "Say It Over and Over Again" is a dreamy affair, while the title track is muscular bebop at its best, eliciting a keening solo from the leader.

Then, too, Pope leaves little else to chance, assembling a startling group of sidemen: saxophonists James Carter and Walter Blanding, trumpeters Terell Stafford and David Weiss, drummer Jeff "Tain" Watts, pianist George Burton, and bassist Lee Smith, father of bassist Christian McBride.

It all makes for a steaming encounter. Pope would be far better known if he had traveled more outside Philly, but his sound might not be so steeped in the tradition, either.

- Karl Stark

nolead begins Jimmy Amadie
nolead ends nolead begins Kindred Spirits
nolead ends nolead begins (TP ***)

nolead ends Pianist Jimmy Amadie, who nearly destroyed his hands from overpracticing decades ago, passes another milestone in his comeback. Here on his seventh recording, he takes turns playing with three saxophonists eminent in anyone's book: Joe Lovano, Lew Tabackin, and Lee Konitz.

Some things don't change. Amadie, 73, of Bala Cynwyd, still plays a session and takes months to heal. So this set was recorded between 2007 and 2009. This time he also had lung cancer to contend with.

The challenges seem to sharpen Amadie's focus on this mix of originals and standards. The pieces are deep in mainstream and not unpredictable. Amadie is his usual liquid self, pressing softly but carrying a big lick.

Steve Gilmore and Tony Merino share the bass duties. Bill Goodwin handles the drums. The three soloists all add spice and different flavors. Tabackin, who turns 70 later this month, was a Philly contemporary of Amadie's, and blows some rigorous flute on "Blues For Thee 'DV,' " while Lovano plays further outside on a burning version of Monk's "Well You Needn't." Konitz is somewhere in between, making an elegant bopper on "I Want to Be Happy."

- K.S.